There is one question
I get over & over again, one of the first questions people who have just
met me always ask...:"Why Sweden?". That is, why am I so in
love (ok, some might say *obsessed*! ;o), with this coutry, why did I choose
to study Swedish and why do I want to move back there for good so badly?

I could list a
lot of reasons..Still you most likely wouldn't understand. But I can tell you
this, hoping it will make more sense than all the other "logical"
reasons...Sweden feels more like home to me than Italy has ever done. Is that
enough of an explanation? Good!

["My
beautiful sister had got that disease that Pomerans call "Sweden-sickness".
She was in love with the nordic country and always longed for it..."
]

(Carina
Burman, Islandet)

And that's exactly
how I feel!

One day I hope
I will be able to gather here the most meaningful ones among my Sweden travel
stories and Sweden pictures. For the time being I'll just tell you that I have
lived up there in different occasions:

in Göteborg,
as an au-pair
with help from this
agency, and
in Uppsala,
first as exchange student through the Erasmus
Program,which allowed me to study at Uppsala
University and then as resarching student, while working on my thesis.
Both were wonderful experience, although most definitely very different from
each other; both gave me incredibly much, both made me the person I am today.

Maybe you will
want to follow my traces?

But be careful...You
might never be the same again! ;o)

You
know you've been in Sweden too long, when...

1.You
associate pea soup with Thursday.

2.The
first thing you do on entering a bank/post office/pharmacy etc.
is look for the queue number machine.

3.You
accept that you will have to queue to take a queue number.

4.A
sharp intake of breath has become part of your vocabulary, as has
the sound 'ahh'.

5.You
associate Friday afternoon with a trip to systembolaget.

6.You
think nothing of paying $50 for a bottle of 'cheap' spirits at
systembolaget.